ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said Wednesday on NewsNation that President Joe Biden’s farewell address needed “silence or a simple goodbye,” as most Americans were “not interested” in hearing what he had to say.
Biden addressed the nation for the last time on Wednesday evening. He discussed his administration’s work over the last four years before he expressed concern about what he said was “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people, the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” Smith appeared on “Cuomo” to discuss his reaction to the president’s final speech before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
“I was sad. Of course the president is entitled, and he should give a farewell speech. There is no question about that. But different times invade us all, and when you see the times that we live in sometimes you see something and you just say, ‘Silence or a simple goodbye would suffice.’ That’s how I felt about the president tonight,” Smith said.
Smith also said Biden was supposed to be a “transitional president.”
“When we see what transpired, what we’ve witness[ed], what has transpired over the last year plus. He was supposed to step away. He was supposed to be a transitional president, and you didn’t do that,” Smith said. “You decided that you wanted to stay in the race, and then you got exposed because you showed up on a debate stage June 27, and you were not what people on the left have purported you to be. Then you ultimately [were] forced out by a party and the candidate, Kamala Harris, was somebody that you immediately endorsed.”
Following Biden’s poor debate performance in June against Trump, Democrats, pundits and donors all questioned his ability to serve another four years as the nation watched him struggle on stage to finish his arguments and, at one point, even freeze mid-statement. By July 21, Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote to Trump.
Smith went on to say that Biden and his administration had “open borders since” his first day in office and a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. “The mandate” from voters, Smith added, was more against Biden than “necessarily for Donald Trump.”
“Essentially, you’re trying to still have that level of influence, and that’s faded. It’s faded. We’ve moved beyond that as a nation. Nobody with a decent soul wants anything negative, anything harmful, anything bad to fall upon him in any way,” Smith said.
“But in the same breath there’s a lot of people out there that didn’t want to hear what he had to say months ago when he was president and unfortunately — maybe not me, maybe not you two — but unfortunately there’s not a lot of Americans that were interested in hearing what he had to say tonight. And that’s sad,” Smith said.
With fewer than six days until Inauguration Day, Biden is set to leave office at the lowest recorded approval rating of his term, with his favorability also close to his personal low, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSR. The poll, released Wednesday, shows that only 36% of Americans approve of Biden’s four years in office, with 33% finding him favorable and 58% finding him unfavorable.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/NewsNation/”Cuomo”)
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